


Feet in your shoes

by busaikko



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - High School, Community: non_mcsmooch, First Kiss, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-02
Updated: 2010-05-02
Packaged: 2017-10-09 16:35:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/89466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/busaikko/pseuds/busaikko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Ronon doesn't know exactly how old he was when he ran, and he's not sure how long it's been since he lived in a house with a family.  It's kind of nice.  He knows that technically Teyla's place is a temporary living facility, but it's the best he's ever been in.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Feet in your shoes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kanata (kyuuketsukirui)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyuuketsukirui/gifts).



  
Ronon doesn't know exactly how old he was when he ran, and he's not sure how long it's been since he lived in a house with a family. It's kind of nice. He knows that technically Teyla's place is a temporary living facility, but it's the best he's ever been in. The house is big and old, just south of the El tracks, with Teyla's meditation studio on the ground floor; upstairs, there are only two people to each bedroom, and the bathrooms are always clean. Aidan talked about the place like it was home, that's how Ronon heard about it, but Aidan says he can't go back now that he's using again. Ronon goes looking for Aidan after he's been there a few months, but he doesn't find him. Teyla's partner, Elizabeth, is this thin white woman who teaches law downtown, and Ronon feels like she helps him out mostly because she thinks she failed Aidan.

Ronon's pretty sure he's old enough to be out of school by now. He feels stupid when he has to take placement tests, and that makes him angry because he _knows_ he's smart. He's still alive, isn't he? He can't even talk about how humiliating it is when he gets back that first day, just grabs a bottle of soda from the fridge and goes up to practice throwing his knife into the headboard of the bed. Teyla comes upstairs and stands in the doorway, watching him with her arms crossed, and Ronon thinks, well, this is it, she's going to kick him out. Instead, she gets him to agree to a deal where if he goes to school every day for the whole first trimester, she'll teach him eskrima stick fighting like she learned when she was a Marine back home.

Turns out Teyla can kick his ass, even though she's tiny.

Turns out school's not that hard once he gets used to the way things are done. The second trimester, the only course he's taking in the Basic track is math, and most of what's holding him back is terminology. He takes drama because Teyla says he has presence, and an intro to law class because it seems pretty useful.

He thinks about moving on the first time it snows, and the second, and the third. One day the windchill factor brings the temperature down to minus sixty, and Ronon can't believe people live like this.

"I'm going back to California," he tells Teyla over coffee one morning. "This sucks balls."

"Yes," Teyla agrees. She wears at least two sweaters, all the time. "Some people think it's pretty."

"People who don't have to shovel the crap," Ronon mutters. His shoulder muscles have a permanent burn from clearing driveways, but he makes good money -- more per hour than he gets working at Dominick's, anyway. He tells Elizabeth he's saving for college, even though realistically he'll end up using it to pay rent.

"Do not be late for school," Teyla says, and hands him his hat.

When he gets home, late because there was chemistry lab and it was a day when they got to blow shit up, which is always cool, there's a new kid in the kitchen. He's helping Elizabeth chop up vegetables for supper, even though it's supposed to be Lam and Greer's day to cook.

"Hey," Ronon says, and looks the kid over. He's wearing preppy clothes and has a good haircut, and his shoes are expensive and casually scuffed and untied, the sort of neglect that rich people think looks cool. His hair is dark brown and he doesn't look much like Elizabeth, apart from being white; Ronon figures him for some relative of hers.

"Ronon," Elizabeth says warmly, and points to a pan of cornbread on the stove, already cut into squares. "This is John," she adds, as he grabs one.

John nods, looking serious even though he his round cheeks are windburned and he has a potato in one hand.

"That your real name?" Ronon asks, shoving in the last bite of cornbread, smiling and giving John an arch of his eyebrows to let him know it's a challenge.

"Ronon yours?" John counters, and then shrugs, looking down.

The way John drops his eyes, looking off to the side, makes Ronon think that maybe John actually does belong there.

After dinner, John helps with the dishes and Ronon invites him upstairs to hang out. The house rule is that room doors can't be shut if you have a friend over; this is to make it harder to fuck around, Ronon assumes. John's the first person Ronon's ever had over, and it's weird apologizing to Greer for having to leave the door open.

"I have to do my homework, though," Ronon says. Tuesday and Wednesday are his days off work, and he needs these hours to keep up. He's aware that most kids don't treat their studies like a job, but as Teyla says, in the end all he's got is what he can carry in his head and do with his hands. John just stretches out across Ronon's bed and flips through whatever notebooks Ronon's not using.

"Every teacher explains stuff differently," John says, when Ronon asks. "Look, here, this stuff?" -- and he shows Ronon the pages on explosives -- "I never learned that."

"Ms. Cadman's awesome," Ronon says. "You a sophomore, too?"

John hunches his shoulders and looks uncomfortable, but after a moment says _yeah_ and starts reading Ronon's annotated copy of Othello.

At ten Teyla knocks on the open door and says it's time for John to go home. Ronon knows that most kids break rules a lot, too, but as he explains to John, "Teyla says brooms are strong because the straws are tied tightly together." He makes the dumb decisions that untie him from Teyla, he knows just how weak he'll be.

"A lot of the time I have no idea what Teyla's sayings mean," John confesses. "I just agree because have you seen her with those sticks?"

"She beats me up all the time," Ronon says, taking the porch steps in one jump and watching John unlock his bike. "She's cool."

John tilts his head at Ronon and says _bye_ while looking at the patchy front-lawn grass.

"I thought he was new here," Ronon says to Teyla afterwards, as she's locking up for the night. He's trying to ask about John without any actual questions.

Teyla gives him a look to let him know he's not getting away with anything. "He comes around a couple times a year."

"He's rich," Ronon says, and then adds, "What's he running away from?"

Teyla just shakes her head and gives him one of those _sayings of her ancestors_: "True well-being comes from happiness, not wealth."

Ronon doesn't see John again until one Friday when the snow's already melting on the ground. He's walking home on South Boulevard, under the El, past the Tasty Dog and the Italian ice place, when he sees John unchaining his bike from the lightpost in front of the comic book store. "Hey, John," he says, lowering his voice so it carries. John tenses, shoulders clenching hard before he even turns around, and after he sees that it's Ronon he still looks like he's going to bolt, despite the lazy way he smiles and says "Hey" back.

John's got a heavy backpack that he stuffs a bag of comics into; he says he came straight from school.

"You don't go to school around here," Ronon says, and John just falls into step beside him, pushing his bike. "You think Teyla and Elizabeth would turn you in if they knew where you're from or what your real name is?"

John shrugs. "Plausible deniability."

"So what's the big deal about comics?" Ronon asks, changing the subject even though he's never liked comics. People in their underwear, saving the world.

When they get to the house, Ronon still isn't sold on comics, but he thinks John's funny when he's not trying to hide. He's kind of sorry that he's working five to nine, because he'll miss John's visit.

John says, "I can come back tomorrow."

"Working tomorrow, too," Ronon says. John looks disappointed, so he adds, "Get off at two, though," and John grins and says, "Awesome."

John's wearing the same clothes and is kind of dirty when he shows up, but Ronon doesn't say anything about it. John takes him on a long, purposeful walk. They talk about movies and games and sports, and keep going past factories that smell so good Ronon's stomach grumbles like thunder.

"We're almost there," John says, looking a little worried, like he's not being a good host or something.

Ronon ruffles John's hair, rubbing at it like he's a dog, and John twists away, laughing. "Been hungrier than this," Ronon says. "Where we going?"

"Just over here," John says. It's another twenty minutes before John leads the way under the tollway and through some fences, to the shade of a rusted-through shed, where they have a perfect view of the planes landing at O'Hare. It's noisy as fuck, so John mostly shouts in Ronon's ear. He knows a lot about airplanes; he says he wants to be a pilot. John pulls a plastic bottle refilled with water and a bag of Cheetos out of his backpack, and after they eat and watch a few more planes John squints at the sky and hollers over an engine's whine that they should be going.

John doesn't go inside when they get back to the house. He's fidgety, and Ronon thinks he doesn't want to have to see Elizabeth or Teyla.

"You going home tonight?" Ronon asks in the driveway, while John winds his bike chain around the seat post. "Or sleeping out again?" John doesn't say anything. Ronon figured he wouldn't. "You got a safe place?"

John nods, and after a long moment says, "See you, then."

That night it rains, and Ronon lies in bed listening to Greer's heavy breathing and wondering if John's family's worried. Ronon still misses Melena, even though he knows she wasn't his mother, really. Teyla tried to find her, once, because Ronon wasn't able to say that he was pretty sure he saw her killed. His old memories are all faded and uncertain, but he remembers blood. Melena always wanted to know everything, where Ronon had been and what he'd done, who he'd been with. She'd been really nosy. Ronon figures that meant she loved him.

John comes by one day a month later when Ronon's at school. He knows John's there because of the bike leaning against the side of the house, but when he goes inside Teyla sticks her head out of her studio and says that John's upstairs sleeping in Bates' bed and should be left alone.

Ronon looks in on him anyway. John sleeps curled tight in a ball, one arm covering his face. When Ronon gets back from work, John's gone.

"I don't know what to do about John," Teyla says, when Ronon doesn't-ask again. "He's very private."

"That's for sure," Ronon says.

"He talks more to you than anyone," Teyla comments offhand, and Ronon thinks if John's talkative with him, then that has to mean something. Maybe they're friends.

The Fourth of July is a big deal in this town, apparently; Ronon's never felt like he belonged to a place enough that the festivities meant anything to him. He walks around and people-watches the crowds, saying hi to other kids from school and to regular Dominick's customers. Teyla has a barbeque in the driveway which is open to pretty much anyone wandering by, and Ronon spends most of the afternoon grilling meat until Teyla kicks all the kids out to go watch the fireworks up at the high school football stadium.

He almost doesn't recognize John when he sees him because the long heavy hair has all been chopped off raggedly, leaving John with a head full of sticking-up pieces of hair. Ronon almost says something about it, except that when he waves and John sees him, John's eyes go right down again, like he's ashamed as well as keeping his silence.

Ronon wants to beat the crap out of whoever cut off John's hair.

"You just get here?" he asks John instead, and points over to where he's heading, the sports center park, which is crowded but not half as bad as the stadium seating will be. "Teyla about cooked a whole cow. And a pig. It was great."

"Any leftovers?" John asks, sounding like he's just talking on automatic. Ronon spots a good space under the trees at the back of the tennis courts. The view is probably crappy, which is why everyone else is squeezing into the other side of the park, but it's away from overhead lights and the trees will be good to lean on, seeing as they don't have lawn chairs.

"Nope," Ronon says, and grins, dropping down onto the grass. "You should have called. I'd have stuck a burger in the fridge for you."

John sighs and drops his head back against the tree trunk. His face is in shadow, but Ronon thinks John's eyes are shut. "Does it bother you that Teyla and Elizabeth are lesbians?" He says the word awkwardly, as if he knows it from reading but hasn't used it in conversation much.

Ronon flicks John in the head with a finger. "No."

John turns his head, just a bit, and Ronon knows John's looking at him; it's kind of creepy. "You ever want what they have?"

"Someday," Ronon says. "Sure." His brain's clicking together things he knows about John, now, and he wonders, and he wishes he could ask.

The fireworks start then, with a ground-shaking volley that makes both of them jump. John leans a little bit closer to Ronon every time the cannon-things go off, trying to see better. There's an big invisible buffer between them, though, a space that John's keeping inviolate of touch, and it's ridiculous. Ronon drops one arm around John's shoulders and pulls him in close. John's stiff and tense and breathing too carefully for a handful of minutes. Ronon waits him out; either he'll take the opportunity or he won't. It's not like Ronon really knows what to expect. He's never done this before.

The sky lights up with three big canopies of fire, gold sparks falling down like the fronds of weeping willows, and Ronon can hear people cheering and clapping. He thinks it's funny: not like the chemicals and ash need applause. He's smiling when he feels John lean into his side, John's fucked-up hair brushing against his cheek. Ronon resettles his arm, tucking John in closer, his fingers curling around John's arm. John's heavy and he smells sunwarmed and a little sweaty. Ronon had kind of half been wondering whether he just liked John as a friend or whether he was attracted to him sexually as well, but his body is letting him know now that it was both.

John reaches up one hand and touches Ronon's face in the dark, brushing his fingers down from his ear to press against the bone of his jaw, just lightly, thumbnail dragging against stubble with a rasp. The feeling's intimate enough to make Ronon's skin heat. He pushes a little against John's hand, but John refuses to be nudged away.

The next set of fireworks is mostly red and orange. Ronon's got enough light to be able to turn and see some of John's face -- the outline of his nose, his eyes -- and John's staring back at him. Then John twists and pushes up and leans in and puts his mouth right over Ronon's, just a brush of his lips. Ronon kisses him harder than that, putting one hand at the back of John's neck to keep him from getting away. John shudders, his breath hitching, and Ronon grins and licks John's lips. John goes tense all over, like a cat stalking prey, and Ronon's not going to let himself get caught that easily. The kissing goes on through the scuffle of trying to touch and trying to be in control and trying to pin each other to the ground. John doesn't know how to fight, but Ronon really doesn't want to hurt him, so it's harder than he thought to get John down and under him. He has to hold John still with one leg thrown over John's, so he's in a good position to feel that John's hard. John's gasping and laughing and still trying to get away, so Ronon takes a break from the kissing to say, "You're safe."

"Duh," John says. He digs his feet against the ground, hips coming up hard to the side and then it's Ronon going down, John's hands pressing against his shoulders.

"You're also crazy," Ronon adds. "There's cops all over this place." He sits up, dislodging John. He thinks he doesn't need any run-ins with authority tonight; he doesn't think they'd approve of the fighting or the gay stuff. He's thinking if he sneaks John in, he might be able to get away with shutting the bedroom door.

"I really," John says, voice slow and rough. He swallows, looks away, then makes himself look back, jaw sticking out with the effort. "My name really is John."

"That sucks," Ronon says, easy. "It's boring." He stands and gives John his hand and a pull to get him upright

"Thanks a _lot_," John says, getting his balance and making a half-assed attempt to sucker punch Ronon. Ronon deflects his hand, grabbing John's elbow with just enough pressure on the pain point that when he pulls John steps forward involuntarily.

Ronon ducks his head and kisses John again. "Come on," he says, and finds that it's not that hard to walk with one arm slung over John's shoulder, especially not after John slides his own hand down over the small of his back to settle at his waist. "Let's go home."

"Yeah," John says. "Okay," and as they walk John's head goes down again for a long moment, staring at the sidewalk, before he jerks his eyes up and starts watching where he's going, like he doesn't want to miss anything.

end


End file.
